


30 Home #writober2020

by YungWenLean



Category: Ginga Eiyuu Densetsu | Legend of the Galactic Heroes
Genre: Canon Compliant, Gen, Songfic
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-10-30
Updated: 2020-10-30
Packaged: 2021-03-09 06:14:54
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 3
Words: 711
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/27280090
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/YungWenLean/pseuds/YungWenLean
Summary: People always talk about coming home like it's a happy place.Oskar, Walter and Reinhard beg to differ.
Kudos: 4





	1. Home Is Where The Hatred Is

**Author's Note:**

> Next to last in the #writober2020 challenge, check the profile for more etc etc

_ Home is where the hatred is _

_ Home is filled with pain and it _

_ Might not be such a bad idea if I never _

_ Never went home again _

Home Is Where the Hatred Is, Gil Scott-Heron 

“You’ll feel at home in no time,” they said when he departed for Heinessen. 

He would. 

Home is where dirty secrets are kept behind a proper facade. 

Home is where he spends countless nights alone with a glass in his hand.

Home is where the whores he sleeps with go when he’s done with them, returning to their husbands.

Home is what his friends abandon him for.

Home is the ugly face that everything new and unsullied shows after a while. 

He’s been running away from home his whole life, but home always catches up. On the battlefield it never did. He could spend years on board the Tristan and it was never home, because war is the opposite of home. War is what you come back home from.

He was going to the edge of the galaxy and the war was over. Heinessen would feel like home in no time. 


	2. Homecoming

_ Now everybody got the game figured out all wrong _

_ I guess you never know what you got 'til it's gone _

_ I guess that's why I'm here and I can't come back home _

  
  


He’s on top of a staircase, bodies piling up beneath him. Brunhilde is technically imperial territory, so it means that he came home and killed a hundred people. How classical. It only took him three times longer than Ulysses to do that. But then again, just like Ulysses, he didn’t really want to come home.

What is home? Is it the country that gave life to him and his family? The country that gave him his name and the sense of pride that came with it. The country where he could grow up to be an arrogant pig, living on his privilege and assuming that he deserves a better life just by being born into a certain family. The country that could wake up from slumber in a matter of months if a great leader took command.

Or is it the country where he learned to hide his background and pretended not to speak German when he was a child? The country where he could be made a commander despite his ancestry, but the military distrusted him based on the sins of those before him. The country where the best were held back by the mediocre, in the name of freedom and democracy that the brave died defending so that the cowards could live on. 

“I will die of old age surrounded by children and grandchildren,” he used to say, but he never acted towards that goal. He never tried to create a home of his own. He was given many second chances at life, cheated death an innumerable amount of times, and he always knew better than to make himself promises about change that he later wouldn’t keep.

This time he could fully commit to the thought that if he had been given another chance in life, he would have chosen differently.

_ Do you think about me now and then? _

_ 'Cause I'm coming home again _

_ Maybe we can start again _

Homecoming, Kanye West


	3. A House Is Not A Home

_ A chair is still a chair, even when there's no one sittin' there _

_ But a chair is not a house and a house is not a home _

_ When there's no one there to hold you tight _

Coming home from school used to be the best part of the day. If he stalled on the way back, it was only to build up to the sweetness of the return. Like putting off opening a gift, when you want to drink in the anticipation to the last drop. 

When he’s stalling now, when he avoids returning from school, it doesn’t come out of a longing. It’s simply because he doesn’t have a home anymore, just a house. The house is there as it always has been. The home has burned down to the ground and the only thing remaining, like a charred photograph that you find in the ashes, is Kircheis. 

_ I'm not meant to live alone, turn this house into a home _

A House Is Not A Home, Luther Vandross


End file.
